And the happy brook murmured, “Glory, glory, glory! the glory of God.”


“Now we will see what this bit of paper has for us,” said the wind as he picked up the paper at the foot of the elm.

“Ah! What have we here? Evolution! Just what we want: ‘evolution, the act of unfolding or unrolling.’”

He stopped with a thoughtful look.


“Yes, I see. As the young leaves and flowers unfold. The plants must take full charge of this department, I think. I remember once turning over the leaves of a fat, dark-gray book, with gilt letters on its back. It lay on a minister’s window-seat, and it looked interesting, so I read a few minutes while the minister was out and not using it, and among other things that I read was this, and it stayed with me ever since: ‘A lily grows mysteriously. Shaped into beauty by secret and invisible fingers, the flower develops, we know not how. Every day the thing is done: it is God.’ You see, my dear,” addressing himself to a pure white lily that had only that morning unfolded its delicate petals to the sun, “you see a great many don’t understand how it is done. You need to tell how God has made you able to unfold.”


“Yes, we will, we can,” they all cried.

“The flowers will speak on Evolution,” wrote down Woodpecker.

“There are three more words spoken by our friend Fish, still unexplained,—literature,—”